Archive for the ‘anti – Christ’ Category

First off, allow me to be fair and state that not every dispensationalist adheres to this error. However, the wishful interpretation of this text is common among premillennial dispensationalists who believe in the pretribulation rapture. Now this is not intended to be a denial of the rapture doctrine. I was raised to believe in the rapture, and I am perfectly willing to adhere to this doctrine again the very instant that someone shows me justification for it in the Bible. Now to the text:

“And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth [will let], until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:”

Now for some following verses, because, well, I like them.

[Even him], whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Many rapture teachers frequently use this text as evidence for the rapture of the church. The teaching is that the “until he be taken out of the way” refers to the Holy Spirit’s presence being removed from the earth when the church that is indwelled by the Holy Spirit is raptured away. And – as the teaching goes – without the salt and light that is the church on the earth that acts as a restrainer against evil, the world will slip into evil chaos and great tribulation.

Now two problems with this “Holy Spirit being absent from the world during the great tribulation doctrine” are as follows:
#1. The “tribulation saints” that will be converted during this time (according to the rapture teachers) will somehow experience new birth without the Holy Spirit to accomplish it, and will also brave the vicious persecution of the anti-Christ without the ministry of the Holy Spirit to give them courage and comfort.
#2. A somewhat bigger problem than #1 … as the Bible makes it clear that God’s Spirit is what sustains creation and holds it together, were the Holy Spirit to be removed from the earth at any time, it would disintegrate into nothing quicker than an instant.

So while demonstrating how that doctrine is unworkable when measured against clear Biblical teachings is one thing, I was always unable to arrive at what the text actually meant until now, upon listening to this sermon by R. A. Hargrave, when he preached on the issue of the total depravity of man. Pastor Hargrave shared that it was God’s common grace that withheld man in his fallen condition from becoming as evil as he should, and this evil being reflected in the works of man’s hands, meaning the conditions of the cultures and societies of the nations. He went on to state that in the last days, during the great tribulation, God would remove this restraining influence and mankind would indeed reveal his true wicked nature. And lest there was any doubt, Pastor Hargrave specifically referenced that text.

This also should make one remember Jesus Christ’s prophecy concerning the timing of His second coming: “But of that day and hour knoweth no [man], no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe [were], so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” of Matthew 24:36-39 and a similar passage in Luke 17:26-30, except that text to the Noah reference adds: “Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed [them] all.”

Now I have heard it asserted many a time that these texts do not refer to the societal conditions, but rather the fact that Jesus Christ’s coming will catch people completely by surprise. Of course, those who believe in doctrines that deny the literal millennial reign of Christ and instead teach that human conditions will improve as a result of the church’s increasing its influence on the world – postmillennialism especially – have an interest in downplaying the implications of Matthew 24:36-39 and Luke 17:26-30. However, of all the ways to illustrate the point “my return will catch you by surprise”, Jesus Christ chose the days of Noah, where the Bible says that “the wickedness of man [was] great in the earth, and [that] every imagination of the thoughts of his heart [was] only evil continually” and “the earth is filled with violence through them.” And to the wickedness of the days of Noah, the Luke text adds Sodom and Gomorrah, which the Bible frequently uses as a metaphor for the depths of the human sin condition.

So, the fact that the Noah reference is repeated twice and the Sodom and Gomorrah is added to it makes it very difficult to claim that Jesus Christ was only referring to the suddenness of His appearance and not the condition of mankind when He comes again. The reason is a core rule of hermeneutics: we have to consider what the words meant to when the original audience heard them. Jesus Christ was speaking to Jews for whom “the days of Noah” and “as it was in Sodom and Gomorrah” were most definitely references to the human condition. So for Jesus Christ to use both of those (in the Luke version) very strong references to the wicked state of humanity without meaning anything by it would have only resulted in confusion and unintended meanings by the hearer, and it also makes very real the charge that Jesus Christ was trying to confuse and mislead the hearers on purpose (totally different from His parables, whose interpretations were simply hidden from people, not trying to trick or confuse them).

But 2 Thessalonians 2:6-8 makes the references to Sodom and Gomorrah and the days of Noah clear. That passage most clearly refers to the last days, the time of the second coming of Jesus Christ, as such is what the entire chapter was about, and it states that the common grace of God that is restraining evil will be removed, which will allow the mystery of wickedness to work its iniquity until it results in the personification of human evil in the form of the anti-Christ (actually the beast). This will result in the last days being a time akin to the days of Noah (wickedness on a global scale) and Sodom and Gomorrah (wickedness on a local scale), so the Luke text in particular reveals the comprehensive encompassing scope and penetration of evil. In this way, it forms a curious parallel with how Luke spoke of the spread of the gospel in Acts 1:8 from Jerusalem (evangelism on a local scale) to the uttermost parts of the earth (the global reach of the great commission).

Now one may ask how this pervasive evil will be possible when the church is present sharing its witness to the world. To answer:
1. We must be humble. It isn’t our witness or example to the world that restrains evil, but rather it is God.
2. Go back to the 2 Thessalonians 2 passage to verse 3: “Let no man deceive you by any means: for [that day shall not come], except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” And incidentally, yet another parallel to Matthew 24 and 2 Thessalonians 2 that makes the postmillennialism doctrines even more untenable is Matthew 24:10-12’s “And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” The more modern translations render verse 10 to be “At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another” and “At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other”, and the reference to false prophets in verse 11 is obvious. Because of the great falling away, there simply won’t be very many of us left.
3. Please recall that the original Reformers referred to the righteous in the Old Testament, chiefly Israel, as the church of the Old Testament. So in the days of Noah, Noah and his family were the church of that period. Yet the presence of Noah and his being a preacher of righteousness did not stop the globe from descending into evil. And while Lot was most certainly no Noah, even in his “Laodicean” state of worldly compromise he was nonetheless the church of Sodom and Gomorrah, and his presence did not result in ten righteous people being in that city. So though God commands His church to be salt and light into the world, the reason for this is to glorify God, not to influence the world for the better. The world will remain wicked and in rebellion against God and His Son Jesus Christ, and this will be demonstrated when God removes His restraining Hand and allows the world to be exposed for what it is right before His Son returns so that it will be judged.

Now my suspicion is that the real reason why this text is interpreted erroneously by many is the desire for the church to escape persecution. However, this ignores that when the church endures persecution until the very end, God is glorified. We know this from the example of Job, the oldest book in the Bible. God told Satan that Job would remain in the faith no matter what torments Satan aimed at him, and when Job did so God was glorified. So we saints should be after doctrines that result in God’s glory and not our own comfort. We should also avoid doctrines that exaggerate our own power and importance, such as the claim that our presence on the earth is what keeps it from falling into chaos. Or that the Holy Spirit is on the earth only because we are here (clearly contradicted by Genesis 1:2, which states that the Holy Spirit was on the earth long before humankind even existed to make up a church in the first place).

Also, Revelation 13:7 states that the anti-Christ will make war against the saints and overcome them. Matthew 24:22 states that it will only be for the sake of the church that the days of the great tribulation will be cut short. Is our desire to avoid glorifying God by suffering persecution so great that we ignore what the Bible clearly teaches? One of the ways that dispensationalists who have this aberrant and false teaching concerning 2 Thessalonians 2 deals with those texts is claiming that they refer to Israel and not the church, and to the 144,000 Jews and those converted by them. As evidence of this, they correctly note that Jeremiah 30:7 refers to the great tribulation as the time of Jacob’s trouble. However, such teachings ignore that the church is grafted into Israel, and moreover that the combination of born-again Gentiles and believing Jews constitutes spiritual Israel, true Israel, or Israel of God according to Galatians 6 and Romans 9-11. (Yes, some dispensationalists deny this, and even go to the point of claiming that the new covenant is not the one that currently exists with Christ and the church, but is one that Christ will make during the millennium with natural Israel, showing that many dispensationalists are more rabbinic Jews than Christians or even Messianic Jews). This means that Jacob’s trouble is our trouble!

Again, this is not intended to be a broadside against dispensationalism and rapture teachings entirely, especially the partial rapture teachings for which Revelation 3:10 and the typology of Enoch and Elijah can be used to support, as well as perhaps the mid-tribulation rapture teachings. (Note that neither the mid-tribulation rapture or partial rapture doctrines make the totally heretical claim that the Holy Spirit will be removed from the earth.) However, it is incumbent upon the adherents to the rapture and other premillennial dispensational teachings to avoid false teachings that tickle the ears, provide false comfort, and glorify man in the place of God.

Ultimately, however, these debates are intramural in nature between Christians. Regardless of one’s eschatological beliefs, being born again means ultimately going to heaven, whether the route is being raptured before the tribulation or being beheaded by the anti-Christ during it. When the redeemed are in heaven, no one will care one bit about who was wrong and who was right concerning eschatological doctrines. And even more so, it will be totally irrelevant to those who are unsaved. Rapture, no rapture, if you have not repented of your sins and believed the gospel of Jesus Christ, your eternal fate is the same as that of those of Sodom and Gomorrah and the days of Noah who did not escape the wrath of God but perished. And the horrible ends of their earthly lives was nothing compared to the eternal torment of the lake of fire that is in store for these wicked sinners.

So now is the time to make sure that you do not share their fate if you have not already. Repent of your sins and believe upon the risen Lord Jesus Christ today! You can do so by:

On September 11th, Muslim men hi-jacked several airplanes and flew them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and one of them crashed in rural Pennsylvania due to a passenger uprising that prevented it from hitting its target. This was only the second attack by Muslims on the World Trade Center, and followed a pattern of escalating violence by Muslims against our interests, such as bombing our embassies in Africa and an attack on the U.S.S. Cole.

Since these events, America has conducted military action against three Muslim nations – Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya – while supporting military actions of other nations against some other Muslim nations, namely Ethiopia against Somalia. Further, America would have also attacked Iran by now were Iran not so strong militarily and economically, and may yet attack Iran also down the line if forced to.

So, we are in a war against Islam, correct? A thousand times no. No less than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton and a number of other people in positions of power have made it clear: this is not a war against Islam! Instead, it is a war against terrorism, or a war on terror. In other words, this is not a religious war – for the United States and its principle allies are secular – but an ideological war. So, the United States, and indeed a international community which now must necessarily include the United Nations thanks to their recent resolution authorizing military force in Libya, is committed to waging ideological warfare.

Make no mistake: the problem with Saddam Hussein, Usama bin Laden, Muammar Qadaffi, the Republic of Iran etc. is not that they are Muslims. If you want further evidence of that, witness Peter King’s hearings. Despite the claims of the liberals in the media otherwise, the target was not Muslims as a religion, or as a people or culture who are given over to this barbaric cult born of a demon who abused and entered into M0hammed. (Please note: Christians are to love our neighbors and our enemies, so the teachings of the sermon on the mount of Jesus Christ most certainly applies to our interactions with Muslims.) Instead, it was “radical” Muslims, meaning those who are “anti-American”, or “anti-western” or “anti-democracy.” (Please note: opposing Israel is just fine.)

One may wonder why Great Britain, our most reliable ally in going to warfare in the Middle East, cares about a bunch of anti-American Muslims. Or why the United Nations, which is weakening Iran with sanctions, did the same to Iraq, and now authorized military action against Libya, cares about being “anti-western.” The answer: these things, especially being “anti-democracy”, are merely euphemisms, stand-ins, for opposing the new world order. That is why Abu Mazen, or Mahmoud Abbas, despite being a Muslim terrorist with the blood of innocent Jews on his hands and longtime member of the terrorist P.L.O., is not the target of a war on terror. This Abbas is the leader of a U.N. funded and supported Palestinian Authority, and oft states his desire to create a democracy in Palestine that will be pro-western and pro-United Nations, and a model for other Arab and Muslim regimes. That is why Abbas gets a blank check (both literally and figuratively) from the international community, and Qaddafi gets bombs. (And keep in mind: the international community, including the Bush administration, courted Qaddafi for years, including endorsing his plans to work to centralize the governments and militaries of Africa, before turning on him when he refused to step down in favor of a democratic government.)

So, if being a “terrorist” is not a function of A) your religion, B) your nationality, C) your culture, D) your own membership in a known terrorist organization that affiliates with other terror organizations and regimes and E) your own personal terrorist acts (again, all of which would indict Abbas) but is instead being one who opposes the prevailing worldly ideology, where does that leave Christians who adhere to a legitimate New Testament faith? Precisely.

Rather than going to war against Muslims, the goal is to get Muslims to join the U.N., to join NATO, to join the EU, to participate in these globalist concerns. Muslim Turkey, which persecutes Christians to the outrage of absolutely no one of influence, is very influential in the U.N., a member of NATO and will ultimately join the EU. Right now, a carrot or stick approach is being taken with the Muslim world. Join the emerging world order, and you get a carrot. Refuse, and you get a stick, and replaced with leaders who will take the carrot. Again, this is not a function of the Muslim faith, culture or proclivity to violent jihad. Instead, it is a function of the support for the coming global consensus.

As it is with Muslims, so will it soon be with Christians. Germany, who persecuted legitimate Christians during the reign of Hitler, is now jailing Christians who object to their wicked public education system. One family took their case to the EU on religious freedom grounds, and the EU sided with the German government. At least one African nation is now taking similar actions against Christian parents who homeschool, claiming that it violates the United Nation’s “rights of the child” treaty. Many other examples abound.

Make no mistake: one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. The day will come when being willing to publicly stand for the freedom from sin that comes from being a bondslave to Jesus Christ will cause you to be labeled a terrorist. This will not be merely because of the stands that Christianity takes against abortion, homosexuality and other moral/family issues. As the movie “The Time Changer” succinctly stated, Satan is not against good morals and values, but he is against Jesus Christ and His church, those who keep His commandments and bear His testimony.

Merely being a Christian will be a crime, whether you are a conservative culture warrior who pickets abortion clinics and hands out tracts at “gay pride” events, or a Christian who is relatively liberal on all points that do not transgress the Bible. And when that day comes, the terrorist will be the Christian, and the war will be against the Christian. These days will climax during the time of the great tribulation, when the anti-Christ will be given power to make war against the saints, and to overcome (most of) them. Many Christians will endure great tribulation, including a martyr’s death. Will you stand in those days?

So, Christian, knowing what the “war on terror” will ultimately lead to, how counterproductive is it, how worldly and revealing the lack of a mind renewed from it, would it be to support this abomination NOW? The answer is yours.

If you are not a Christian, make no mistake: being an enemy of the world and its wickedness is part of friendship with Jesus Christ. The good news is that this world and its wickedness will be destroyed and Jesus Christ and His saints will reign forever! You can be a part of this reign by repenting of your worldliness, your sins and:

This is in response to a most excellent comment. As the reply was getting lengthy, I decided to throw it out as a post.

2 Thessalonians 2:7 is cryptic, and likely purposefully so. My first opinion, based on this website, was that the King James Version’s rendering of “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth [will let], until he be taken out of the way” was wrong, and I favored some of the other translations that had a softer, more passive rendering of ginomai ek (he be taken out of), including the New Living Translation (“steps out of the way”), the English Standard Version (“until he is out of the way”) and the International Standard Version (“gets out of the way”). Then I saw that the Geneva Bible favored the King James Version’s rendering, and for that matter so does the NASB. Also, some of the Bibles that had alternate renderings, especially the International Standard Version, had problems, including being far too strong in their translating “arti“, translated to be “he who now”, as “the person who now.”

So, as, I am not a Greek expert, and moreover those who are Greek experts would have fits with coming to a precise meaning of this text because of the ambiguous nature of it in the original language. A major problem is that there does not appear to be other Bible texts that deal with this precise topic, the one who restrains being removed from the way, that would aid us in coming to a more definite interpretation.

The solution is to try to interpret 2 Thessalonians 2:7 with other texts, including 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, and 1 John 2:18, 1 John 2:22, 1 John 4:3 and 2 John 1:7.

“Let no man deceive you by any means: for [that day shall not come], except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.””Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.”

“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.”

“And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that [spirit] of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.”

“For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.”

More texts in this general area would be helpful, but other than the references to the abomination of desolation that are more helpful to 2 Thessalonians 2:4 than to this text, I do not know these at this particular time. So, at this time I know of are the Johannine texts, which can be used to say that the mystery of iniquity of 2 Thessalonians 2:7 is the spirit of anti-Christ is that which denies Jesus Christ as He is pretended to us in the Bible. So, put 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 with the anti-Christ passages of 1 and 2 John, and you have a heretical movement that denies necessary doctrines concerning Jesus Christ taking over the church, and the anti-Christ appearing soon after.

Regarding said heretical movements, combating those was a major concern of the New Testament epistles, including Jesus Christ’s warning to His church in Revelation 2 and 3, and as the current climate in Protestant Christianity tends to denigrate those who stand for orthodoxy (see here and here, although this is not exactly a totally new problem, as Charles Spurgeon was heavily criticized for taking on heretical movements in his day) and the increasing tendency of Christians to choose “science” over the Bible (not just evolution, but pseudo-science such as the “critical scholarship” that is applied to – and used to attempt to discredit – nearly every New Testament verse that is used as the basis for core doctrines) as well as the willingness of a great many Christians to allow worldly concerns (i.e. politics) to distract them from evangelizing and discipleship, it is not difficult to imagine – from a human perspective anyhow – a wave of heresy sweeping through the church.

Incidentally, the “taken out of the way” of 2 Thessalonians 2:7 does not necessarily mean “removed from the face of the earth”, and it especially does not necessarily mean “taken from the face of the earth immediately and dramatically.” Those seeking to find support for a rapture in the Bible will say that it does, and then apply that text to 1 Corinthians 15:51-52’s “we shall all not sleep but shall be changed.” The irony is that the context of 1 Corinthians 15 is not the endtimes at all, but rather Paul’s rebuking the false doctrine in the Corinthian church that there would be no resurrection of the dead, and that there was no resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now if you juxtapose those texts and their context, it would then 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Thessalonians 2 and 1 John 2 and 4 refer to false teachings concerning Jesus Christ that could cause the great apostasy, after which the anti-Christ appears.

That puts the abomination of desolation predictions of the Bible in a spiritual context. If “the holy place” refers not to a Jewish temple (the first and second temples having been destroyed, and Judaism is now a false religion for a host of reasons that are beyond the scope of this topic, which would make claiming the third temple as “a holy place” – as opposed to a tower of Babel erected in rejection of and defiance against Jesus Christ – very theologically difficult!) but rather than the hearts of Christians which are in this era of grace the temple of the Holy Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 6:19-20) then perhaps this abomination of desolation refers to the church’s embrace of a false postmodernist Jesus Christ as opposed to the real One of the Bible?

Suppose that the abomination of desolation – the visible church’s embrace of a false Christ – causes a great apostasy among this same visible church. Further, suppose that this occurs after the Great Commission has been fulfilled, or when it is down to its final stretches, when or immediately before right before the fullness of the Gentiles has been reached according to Romans 11:25 (after which the spiritual blindness of the Jews is lifted). Then, it is possible to use those Bible texts to propose that it is then when the anti-Christ will appear. Of course, the visible church will follow the anti-Christ that they have already erected and worshiped in their own hearts just as Old Testament Israel in the time of their apostasy and fall to Babylon during the ministry of the prophet Jeremiah worshiped Baal in her heart. So, the apostate church would then join the anti-Christ in persecuting the remnant, the legitimate church. That would be the time of Jacob’s trouble as prophesied by Jeremiah 30:7 and fulfilled in Revelation 4-19.

But back to the original topic, “he that restrains being taken away”; that cannot refer to either the Holy Spirit or the church. Jesus Christ makes it clear that the church will persevere until He returns for it, and that the Holy Spirit will do the same as the church’s minister and comforter. (There are bigger issues with the Holy Spirit’s being removed from the earth, as the Holy Spirit is the presence of God, and it is the presence of God that sustains creation … without the presence of God, the universe would disintegrate immediately … see Colossians 1.)

So, perhaps instead of “taken away” as in “removed completely”, how about what the translation actually says, which is “taken out of the way”? Think of a dam that holds water breaking, or chains that is holding a prisoner being broken, or a box kept closed by lock and key (or seal!) having the key turned or the seal broken coming open, and its contents allowed to escape. Consider the apocalyptic language of Revelation, where demons and such that are bound in the pit or the river Euphrates (including Satan being bound in the bottomless pit for 1000 years during the millennium) being set free.

So, this passage could refer to one of the seals being broken of Revelation 6. After the 7th seal is broken, then the trumpets sound. The fifth trumpet sounds in Revelation 9 (which unleashes the locusts), the sixth also (which releases the demons bound in Euphrates), and it is between the sounding of the 6th and the 7th trumpet that the anti-Christ and the false prophet appear in Revelation 13.

Again, this is assuming that the KJV and the Geneva Bible (on which the KJV was largely based) are correct in their rendering of 2 Thessalonians 2:7. This website does in fact argue that the plain, literal Greek states that this verse should read “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he comes forth out of the midst” (or my preference, until he comes forth from among the nations.) It is difficult to assert how ginomai was translated “to be taken away” instead of the usual “to be come, to be made or be finished.” 2 Thessalonians 2:7, then, could well read

“For the mystery of iniquity is already at work and will work until it is finished and he (the anti-Christ” comes forth from among the nations.”

Again, I am no Greek expert, just a guy with access to Strong’s Concordance! However, this translation does appear to square with 2 Thessalonians 2:3 regarding “the son of man being revealed” and Revelation 13:1’s “the beast rising out of the sea” (and the sea allegorically is a reference to the nations and peoples of the earth). So, basically, people will deny Jesus Christ until the anti-Christ basically appears, particularly when the visible church denies Jesus Christ and becomes apostate.

Sorry for the jumbled mess that is this effort, as it was written on the fly in response to a user comment, and I did not organize, outline or edit it first, and it deals with two separate issues: the possibility that both the KJV and the Geneva Bible did damage to 2 Thessalonians 2:7, and also the meaning of that text when it is interpreted with scripture. I will say that the rapture teaching requires the KJV/Geneva interpretation, but that applying this text to the great apostasy makes good use of both the KJV/Geneva translation and one that more strictly follows the literal meaning of the Greek words.

Not so long ago, I shared in the evangelical notion that “Christians need to be represented in Hollywood so that we can be part of the mainstream and use it as a vehicle to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and be salt and light in the culture.” But that was before discovering on websites like Vigilant Citizen, Secret Sun and others what a freak show that industry is. (Babylon? Mystery? The great harlot? It’s all there!) Do not be naive … the Christian powerbrokers that are always whining about not being part of “the in crowd” and want a piece of the entertainment industry action for themselves know this stuff already and have always known. Yet, they demand to be included in this great evil, and even claim that it discriminates against them! And of course, they withhold from their followers – Christian followers – the truth of what this industry is actually about. As a matter of fact, they denounce Christians who do their level best to separate from this stuff and minimize its negative effects as small-minded, anti-intellectual dangerous extremists incapable of effectively conducting ministry “in the real world.” Well, is this the real world? What about this? And yes, this does include a ton of prominent gospel/Christian music artists and prominent preachers, who work with and are intertwined with Hollywood and media, especially behind the scenes.

The fact that mainstream evangelical Christianity would rather join with Hollywood than oppose it notwithstanding, there is one theme in major Hollywood films that seems to be curious: the false messiah. Please recall John 5:43, where Jesus Christ says “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.” This refers to Jesus Christ’s rejection by the world as its true Messiah and Saviour, and the same world’s willingness to embrace false messiahs in His place. In the immediate term, Jesus Christ was predicting that Israel would reject Him and follow after such false messiahs who promised political liberation and a human kingdom as Simeon bar Kochba. Those false messiahs, claiming to have been sent by God and having God on their side, provoked the Roman Empire into destroying the temple and much of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and then to burn the entire city to the ground some 65 years later. Long term, however, Jesus Christ was referencing a series of false messiahs to come, culminating in the beast, the man of sin, commonly called the anti-Christ. How fascinating it is that Hollywood is using movies to prepare the way for the man of sin by releasing “entertainment” that conditions its audience for following him. Consider some examples.

Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader of the Star Wars films.

“Star Wars” is the product of George Lucas, who apparently is an adherent to the theosophy belief system (which is a combination of religious philosophy and mysticism). Anakin Skywalker was born to a virgin slave woman, was prophesied as “the one who would bring balance to ‘the force'” (a dualistic non-personal energy), and after a period of “temptation” by “the dark side of the force” experienced a sacrificial death to secure the triumph of good over evil, and had a sort of “spiritual resurrection.” He also had a forerunner, a John the Baptist sort of herald who preceded him in a death by martyrdom in Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Neo from “The Matrix” films.

“The Matrix” is a product of a worldview that is a combination of postmodernism, Marxism, liberation theology, eastern religions and gnosticism given to us by what used to be “The Wachowski Brothers”, but now consists of one Wachowski brother and another who underwent a sex change operation. (It’s like a freak show in your neighborhood! Freak show baby!) Neo saves mankind from an oppressive world order of machines (which stands for white people, technology, western culture, Christianity and capitalism) to bring in a new bohemian order. The coming of this “Neo” was prophesied by “the oracle”, who is a “goddess” figure that created him as an “incarnation” of herself to help her overthrow the (ultimately secondary) antagonist, “the architect”, a malevolent “god” figure. The “god”, the “goddess” and the “messiah” wind up having to join forces in order to defeat their common threat, “Agent Smith”, a creation of the “god” who has become rogue, turned on his creator and become “Satan”, who wishes to create his own self-styled world order. This “Neo” was specifically not the product of human conception, but instead his physical body was the work of the machine order (“god”), and his mind/spirit, or soul, was the work of “the goddess.” In other words, Neo was “the goddess made flesh.” Morpheus served as the “John the Baptist” figure who paves the way for Neo. Neo dies and rises again (in the first movie), goes to a sideways underworld/hell (the second movie) and makes a final sacrifice of his life that secures the defeat of Agent Smith and a truce between the god and goddess (the last movie).

Sully from Avatar.

This is the product of the atheist environmentalist James Cameron, who saw fit to produce a movie that claimed to prove that Jesus Christ never rose from the dead. It combines Viet Nam and Iraq War allegories with promoting a generic synthesis of eastern, New Age and tribal animistic beliefs. In Hinduism, an avatar is the descent of a deity from heaven to earth, although it is more like an appearance or manifestation than a true incarnation, more akin to the theophanies of the Old Testament than Jesus Christ. However, since the introduction of Christianity into India, many Hindus have concluded that Jesus Christ was an avatar from their religion who appeared in Israel to provide spiritual and moral instruction and enlightenment, essentially assimilating Jesus Christ into their own religion. (In a more modern, secular sense, an avatar is a physical representation of an idea or personality. Note that many websites call the personalized picture that accompanies a username/account an “avatar.”) In this movie, the “soul” (mind/spirit) of Marine Jake Sully is placed inside a soulless alien body (which was created using genetic engineering in a laboratory, making the messianic figure not the product of natural conception) which “dies” (in a sense) when the soul of Jake leaves it but “lives” (or “resurrects” so to speak) when the soul of Jake returns to inhabits it. Sent on this mission to convince the (noble and enlightened) tribal aliens to abandon a tree that grows on top of energy deposits that just happens to be vital to the tribe’s Gaia-like cult, Sully instead converts to the religion, joins the tribe, makes his temporary and laboratory controlled “incarnations” permanent, and leads the tribe in an overthrow of the military-industrial complex invaders (who similar to “The Matrix” represent western, capitalist interests, our existing world order).

Aang from The Last Airbender.

Unlike the director of the other movies, M. Night Shyamalan has a more traditional worldview and is old-fashioned by Hollywood standards in that he actually respects Christianity on some level (see Signs), has a negative view of the occult (see Unbreakable) and rejects postmodernism as it relates to evil (see The Village). Still, Shyamalan jumped at the chance to write and direct a movie that not only presents a false messianic figure, but aims its worldview at impressionable children. Adapted from a very popular Nickelodeon cartoon (and Nickelodeon was created and is owned by MTV Networks) it is an amalgamation of various eastern religions and philosophies, and depicts a world inhabited by humans, animals very similar to creatures described in various mythologies and religions, and spirits. Aang, the messianic figure, is an incarnation of the planet’s spirit component (i.e. an incarnation of Gaia). This Aang discovers that he is the prophesied avatar, and – reminiscent of the prophet Jonah – flees his spiritual calling and as a result winds up in the ocean during a storm. Aang “dies” when he is frozen in ice, is “resurrected” 100 years later, and as the last (or unique) representative of the “air nation” (analogous to heaven) then defeats a penultimate evil threat: the lord of the “fire nation” (analogous to Satan and hell). Aang’s role is to ensure peace, harmony and world order, and as a human incarnation of spirit, he is a link or bridge to both.

It is amazing that these four films (or series of films), despite being made over the course of 30+ years by such diverse personalities and representing rather diverse genres can have so many common threads. It is rather difficult to imagine this being a coincidence.

All the films embrace eastern religions and philosophies.

All the films reject monotheism and organized religion in favor of a type of spirituality.

All the films heavily emphasize martial arts (i.e. karate, kung fu, judo, tai chi) including but not limited to swordsmanship. Make no mistake, just as Albert Mohler (and this own site) says about yoga, eastern practices like martial arts are part of the religion. So, the use of martial arts – often combined with other forms of weaponry and warfare, whether lasers in Star Wars or guns in The Matrix – makes the violent aggression in these messianic films entirely religious in nature, religio-military propaganda after the manner used to justify the Crusades, or in a more recent era the same religious-military propaganda used by axis powers of World War II (which included not only the occult militaristic religion of Nazi Germany, but also the state shinto religion of Japan) and the religious fervor whipped up by the George W. Bush regime and his enablers (no, it’s not just the Muslims who do it, not by a long shot!) during the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.

All either reject – or fail to depict – capitalism in favor of socialism, communalism, bohemianism, tribalism etc. (Star Wars, The Matrix and Avatar are particularly vicious towards capitalism.)

All heavily rely on receiving enlightenment, or some form of “secret knowledge” as opposed to relying on authoritative revelation.

All on some level contain elements of there existing some common, shared or “connected” mind or spirit among humanity.

NONE of these films are anti-war or pacifist in any sense, but quite the contrary. More on that later.

Despite the lack of theism or organized religion, faith plays a huge role, especially among the protagonists.

The films go out of their way to depict racial and cultural diversity and “gender equality” (and this was rather striking in the 1970s when Star Wars was made) among the protagonists (who represent the new world order) while – with the exception of “The Last Airbender” generally depicting the antagonists as white males (representing the existing world order).

In each, the antagonist represents or at least bears a striking resemblance to our existing world order, and the protagonist represents a new world order (that again, shares the common points mentioned). This is the case whether the antagonist is the existing authority that gets overthrown (i.e. the empire in “Star Wars” and the machines in “The Matrix”) or is acting as a usurper (i.e. the fire nation in “Airbender” and the militarized energy company in “Avatar”).

Please note: I am not a Eurocentrist, capitalism/big business/war (Viet Nam or otherwise) apologist, or conservative of any sort. Instead, these are simply common threads that unite these movies. Is this the shape of the common, collectivist based (in religious, economic, social and political terms) society to come? If it is, then Christians might have to consider the possibility that reordering global society to fit this worldview would be a massive undertaking that may take quite awhile to pull off. Be that as it may, these films – and others like them – are most definitely laying the groundwork!

But back to the main point: consider a key difference between the false messiahs in these movies and the true Messiah, Jesus Christ: where the real Messiah is the Prince of Peace, the false messiahs are gods of war. Consider what Daniel 11:38 says of the anti-Christ: that he represents the god of forces. With false messiahs, this has to be the case. The reason is that the real Messiah came to provide spiritual salvation; to save people from their sins by dying on the cross. Jesus Christ didn’t have to pick up a sword and kill anybody to accomplish His mission, because His sinless life in fulfillment of the requirements of the law, His death on the cross to pay for sins, and His resurrection from the dead defeated death itself!

Unfortunately, the world rejects this successful mission on the part of Jesus Christ because the world rejects the idea that it is sinful; that it stands inherently guilty before a holy sovereign God that is Ruler and Judge. To it, the Biblical concept of sin does not exist (a la Buddhism and new age) or one can earn salvation from whatever idea that they do have of sin through works (Hinduism and some forms of shintoism). Either way, it does not recognize a need for a Saviour from sins, and therefore the Person and work of Jesus Christ is irrelevant to its concerns and a foolish offense to its desires.

So, the messiah, deliverer, or cosmic superhero must play another role, which is to save people from their earthly situation as opposed to their earthly condition, and this condition is generally that of oppression, poverty, war, etc. Of course, the root cause for the situation is the same as is the condition: sin. But the refusal to acknowledge that the root cause of political oppression, economic exploitation, discrimination, wars etc. is the sinful condition of humanity requires the one promising temporal deliverance to do so by picking up the sword, taking the fight to and overcoming “the other side”; the oppressors that are perceived to be responsible for all the evil. And make no mistake: Revelation tells us that the anti-Christ will identify the church (and possibly the Jews) as “the other side” that is at least partially responsible for all the world’s ills (just as the early church was blamed for political, economic and social problems in the Roman Empire) and it will be given to this anti-Christ to make war against the saints and to overcome them. Christians will be the evil empire in Star Wars, the machines in The Matrix, the energy company in Avatar, and the fire nation in The Last Airbender and as such will be the targets of the beast’s murderous military, economic, political and religious aggression. This will be to the delight of the citizens of the earth, who will be cheering the anti-Christ on just as did movie theatre attendants at the exploits of Luke Skywalker.

This will be because the church (and perhaps also the Jews) will represent the old world order. It will also be because of the church’s witness! During this time, the remnant will bear witness that the anti-Christ is no true deliverer but a fraud, and that the real solutions are not his program, but rather turning away from sins in true repentance and submission to the true Messiah who is Jesus Christ. Needless to say, it will not be a message that the world wants to hear. Similar to the early Christians who were persecuted often to death for refusing to worship the Roman emperor, such ideas will be considered “unpatriotic” (a fact which should strike contemporary Christians that are politically conservative with no small amount of irony) in the anti-Christ’s regime.

It honestly does appear that with these sorts of movies, Hollywood is providing a picture of the man of sin, and paving the way for his appearance in the process. The good news is that though the church will endure the great tribulation at his hands when he does appear, Jesus Christ will return to cut short the days of the tribulation, defeat the anti-Christ and those who support him, and rescue and vindicate His church, and an army of His saints will return with Him. If you are saved through Jesus Christ, you will be a partaker in this great victory. If you are not, then your only portion will be defeat and joining the anti-Christ in the lake of fire, the second death. Abandon all hope in false messiahs, repent of your sins, and join yourself to the only one true Messiah today!

Sorry for the disproportionate emphasis on the endtimes lately. Rest assured, I am not reverting back to my “Heal The Land With Spiritual Warfare” angry Pentecostal days when I was given to much speculation concerning anti-Christ new world order conspiracies. It is merely that I have finally gotten around to reading an excellent book recommended by the Irish Anglican, which is “Interpreting Revelation: A Reasonable Guide to Understanding the Last Book in the Bible” by the late Merrill Tenney, an evangelical theologian who at one point was under the employ of Wheaton College. Now this Tenney was not nearly objective; rather it was quite easy from reading the book to discern that his beliefs tended towards premillennial dispensationalism/pre-tribulation rapture. Fortunately (for me anyways) Tenney pays little attention to his rapture beliefs beyond “gently” mentioning it as a possibility now and then, and instead deals with other issues using my own preferred methodology, which is literal-historical-redemptive interpretation of Bible texts (a hermeneutic that relies mostly on literal interpretation but allows for symbolic and figurative interpretation where appropriate) supported by responsible prooftexting (interpreting scripture with scripture without using verses out of context in order to support some agenda or bias) and appeals to church history. This makes it possible for me to (mostly) agree with Tenney’s scholarship in “Interpreting Revelation” in spite of my disagreement with his belief in (and in this book advocacy of, however mildly) a pretribulation rapture.

Of particular interest are chapters 8 and 9 of his text, which are “The Chronological Approach” and “The Eschatological Method.” In those, Tenney makes the case – though oddly enough this case was not his intention to make – that premillennialism was the eschatological view adopted based on the Biblical (and extrabiblical) text, and that other systems, particularly preterism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism, were developed for political reasons. (Regrettably, Tenney fails to distinguish between his own modern premillennialism – which includes dispensationalism – and historic premillennialism, or chiliasm. His case would have been much stronger, and dare I say more honest, had he done so. That, and his shocking failure to deal with the objections to premillennialism – his own view – as thoroughly as he did with the systems with which he disagrees actually constitute a greater shortcoming than his occasional stumping for the pretribulation rapture.)

First, preterism. Tenney convincingly credits its development with Alcazar, a Roman Catholic Jesuit friar. This Alcazar was a counter-Reformer, which was a duty of The Society of Jesus in general. He developed preterism in order to refute Protestant attacks on the legitimacy of the Roman Catholic Church, as the Reformers polemically used Revelation to refer to this church and its pope as “Babylon” and “anti-Christ.” His method: claiming that Revelation was written in reference to the early church’s struggle with the Jews (chapters 1-12) and paganism (13-19) and had no contemporary or future application whatsoever. Thus, Alcazar followed after a long line that began at the very latest with Eusebius in marginalizing Revelation for political purposes. What is amazing is that Protestant theologians soon began to adopt for themselves a Roman Catholic system created for the very purpose of opposing – and attempting to destroy – the Protestant Reformation, and many have used it ever since despite knowing its original origin and purpose! Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.

Next, Tenney deals with the political origins of postmillennialism: Augustine’s need to defend the declining Roman Empire (and the ecclesiastical arm of the church-state) along with it. The idea at the time – first proposed by Eusebius in his “official theology” created to support the political aims of Constantine, to whom Eusebius served as an “advisor” – was essentially that the Roman Empire through its making Christianity the state religion, was the earthly fulfilment of the kingdom of God, and that the empire and its church would grow (whether by conversion or coercion) to fill the earth and thereby fulfil the prophecies concerning the global reign of Jesus Christ. Of course, this doctrine JUST HAPPENED to provide a religious justification for the need/desire of the Roman Empire to wage war, conquer territory and subdue/repress people. When the Roman Empire began to crumble, Augustine had to rework his doctrines somewhat in order to arrive at the position that even though the present political order – the Roman Empire – might collapse, the visible church destined to gain global dominion (and domination) would continue by attaching itself to whatever political, social and economic order that existed (whether the Roman Empire of Constantine’s time, the feudalism of the Dark and Middle Ages, or our current political hegemony) and adapting to fit it.

To pull this off, Augustine had to use an allegorical/spiritual method of interpreting Revelation (and other texts) that allowed him to strip the text of its intended meaning and assign the meaning that suited his purposes, which of course were the purposes of the empire and its state church. In that regards, we can consider Augustine to be a postmodern reader-response deconstructionist sort whom the Marxist scholar Jacques Derrida merely followed after 1500 years later! One of the things that Augustine had to do was deny a literal first resurrection, that of the martyrs spoken of in Revelation 20:4-6, by making the amazing claim that this passage referred to Christian regeneration! Now while Augustine was technically not Roman Catholic (but rather “proto-Catholic”) it is still amazing that so many Protestants followed his eschatological groundwork when it so blatantly involved willfully denying the meaning of scripture in order to contrive an interpretation that suited his political needs. Now, the Reformers were motivated to remain basically loyal to Augustine’s eschatology because of their commitment to his soteriology. The problem is that where Augustine’s soteriology is easily confirmed by a plain reading of the Bible, one has to reject that plain reading in order to adopt his eschatology. The Reformers erred in not being consistent in their hermeneutics, and with regard to the magisterial Reformers in general, were not free of their own political needs in maintaining their own church-states.

Amillennialism, at least according to Tenney, is little more than an improved or more sophisticated and “realistic” postmillennialism. Thus, it follows the same Eusebius-Augustine theological lineage, and ultimately comes to the same conclusions, even if – again according to Tenney – it makes better use of scripture in arriving at them. For instance, amillennialism also generally denies a literal first resurrection. Which is understandable: if the church and the political/economic/military/religious/cultural systems (the world) are one and the same, then who is martyring the Christians that will be resurrected? However, it should be pointed out that amillennialists do generally acknowledge that evil will increase before the return of Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ does return to overthrow and judge a wicked worldly system, a wicked ungodly antiChrist system (as opposed to a personal antiChrist). At best, this system is an attempt to reconcile political eschatology with what the Bible actually says. As stated earlier, this was likely done because these doctrines came as part of a larger packaged doctrinal system (i.e. covenant theology).

Then, there is premillennialism. Tenney does acknowledge that premillennialism was not the consensus view of the early church, though he does regretfully understate this fact. However, Tenney does effectively make the case that premillennialism was a doctrine of many Christians from the earliest times in recorded church history, and naming such people as Papias and Justin Martyr (who wrote mere decades after the canon was completed, as early as 115 AD) as well as Irenaeus. Tenney uses the uncanny similarity between the millenarian teachings in Revelation and those in such apocryphal books as Baruch and Esdras IV as evidence of the existence of chiliast beliefs in the first century church. Of course, many throughout church history have used this fact against premillennialism, claiming that it is Jewish propaganda and misinterpretations of prophecy, but that principle is not used against apocryphal and extrabiblical references that appear in other Bible books (i.e. the book of Jasher and the book of the wars of the Lord in the Old Testament; the book of Enoch and the Assumption of Moses in Jude).

Of course, embrace of premillennialism was far from universal in the early church. However, some of that can be attributed to anti-Jewish bias among Gentile Christians (which scripture tells us was developing as far back as when Paul composed the epistle to the Romans), and more still to a lack of a normative canon, and in particular the fact that Revelation appears to have been among the last books to gain widespread circulation and acceptance. However, it is known that vigorous opposition to chiliasm – and in many cases to Revelation itself, including many who wanted to either explain away its meaning and application or keep it out of the canon altogether – did not arise until Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, and that this opposition was motivated by the need to depict the Roman Empire as the fulfilment of God’s kingdom. Tenney’s assertion of this point is by no means unique, but is repeated in any number of books on church history, and in particular those that deal with the debate over Revelation’s inclusion in the canon.

A final positive contribution by Tenney is his debunking the common claim that premillennialism received its modern revival thanks to the works of such spurious characters as Cyrus Scofield. The effects of this contribution is somewhat diminished by Tenney’s failure to acknowledge that at least some of the Christians who began investigating premillennialism had social and political motivations. This was true of certain radical Anabaptists in their violent upheavals in the 16th and 17th centuries, and also of Christians operating in the political, economic and social upheavals in the United States and England in the 19th century. Still, Tenney does identify a list of more reputable scholars who contributed to the revival of premillennialism (including historic premillennialism, which again Tenney regrettably does not distinguish) including Johann Albrecht Bengel, Hermann Olshausen, Heny Alford (definitely a chiliast), Johann Peter Lange (somewhat questionable because of his tendencies towards neo-orthodoxy), Andrew Fausset (another chiliast), Joseph Seiss, Franz Delitzsch and Charles Ellicott. Unfortunately, Tenney does the credibility of his effort in compiling that list great harm by including Plymouth Brethren hyperdispensationalist (a position that challenges the unity of the New Testament by setting Paul’s teachings over against those of the gospels and Acts) John Nelson Darby on his list of “reputable scholars”! (Why Darby and not Scofield, who in some respects is actually LESS problematic?)

So, Tenney’s book, despite its problems, helps one arrive at the conclusion is that premillennialism is the eschatological position that, despite is shortcomings, reflects the Biblical text according to a consistent hermeneutic and early church doctrines, and not the political need to assert that a church-state serves as the kingdom of heaven until the return of Jesus Christ. The former view integrates Revelation into a consistent schema of Old and New Testament thought – and not merely thought related to the apocalyptic/eschatological/prophetic – while the latter makes one wonder why Revelation is in the canon in the first place, and especially its application to contemporary Christians.

Romans 11:26-27 reads “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.” Now John Calvin, despite his being right on so many other matters, erred when he claimed that this passage refers to spiritual Israel, the church. This cannot be the case, because Sha’ul the Benjamite Jew (more commonly known as Saul, or Paul) had already made the distinction between Israel and the church, between natural Israel and spiritual Israel, earlier in Romans (such as Romans 2:28-29 and Romans 9:3-4), and furthermore declares himself to be a member of both natural and spiritual Israel. Also, “when I shall take away their sins” cannot in any sense refer to the church, because Paul is referring to a prophecy that is as yet unfulfilled with respect to national Israel. For we all know that spiritual Israel, the church, has already had its sins taken away.

So, Romans 11:26-27 refers not to the past/present church, but a future event when national Israel is saved and joins spiritual Israel; when natural Israel becomes a member of both groups just like Paul and the other apostles. John Calvin was unable to acknowledge the plain meaning of that text because of his theological bias; the covenant theology framework that refuses to acknowledge a distinction between Israel and the church, claims that Israel was the church of the Old Testament, and that (among other things) where infant circumcision was the covenantal inclusion ritual of the Old Testament church, infant baptism is the covenantal inclusion sacrament of the New Testament church.

So, allowing Romans 11:26-27 to stand as written, when will this event happen? When will Israel’s national salvation occur? The hint occurs in Revelation 1:7, which reads “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they [also] which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.” That text points directly to Zechariah 12:10, which reads “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.” Now the spirit of grace and supplications (see Romans 8:26-27) is the Holy Spirit. The One who sents the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete (see John 14:16-26), is Jesus Christ. So, Jesus Christ is the “me” whom “they” have pierced, and “they” in this specific context are the Jews, who bear the national responsibility for killing Jesus Christ through the actions of their religious and political leaders in the time of Jesus Christ, Caiaphas the high priest and the Sanhedrin.

So, when this prophecy is fulfilled, the same Holy Spirit that currently indwells the church, spiritual Israel, will also indwell the Jews, natural Israel. And if this prophecy is to be interpreted literally, this will not be the result of individual conversion by way of preaching the gospel as happens with the church, be its members (Messianic?) Jewish or Gentile, but instead an act of national salvation akin to God’s delivering Israel from Egypt and making the covenant with the Jewish nation at Sinai as recorded in Exodus. (It is obvious – to me anyway – that this precludes any notion of “free will salvation.” Just as Israel had no choice in the matter at Sinai, but instead God imposed the Sinai terms on His vassal nation as its Suzerain Lord) they will have no choice to choose or reject Jesus Christ when He comes to fulfill Romans 11:26-27 with respect to the Jewish nation.

And when will this event happen? As Zechariah 12 is obviously linked to Revelation, which deals with the fate of the church (and please recall my position that there will be no “pretribulation rapture”, or even if there is one, it will be a partial one that will leave the vast majority of the church to endure the great tribulation), Israel and the world, this event will happen at some point during the great tribulation. More specifically, as Zechariah 12:10 and Romans 1:7 obviously describe the second advent of Jesus Christ, the best Biblical evidence (again, according to my opinion) is that this blessed event will occur at the time described in Revelation 19:11-21, which is Jesus Christ returning from heaven with His saints and angels to defeat the armies of the beast (or anti-Christ) and – according to those of us with premillennialist leanings – set up His 1000 year kingdom.

It is impossible to claim that Zechariah 12:10, or more accurately the much longer prophecy block that includes much of Zechariah 12-14, has been fulfilled already. It cannot refer to the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem or the Babylonian destruction of the same, as those had already occurred when Zechariah – who lived in the time of King Darius – wrote his book. It also cannot refer to 70 A.D., because of Zechariah 12:7-8, which reads “The LORD also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify [themselves] against Judah. In that day shall the LORD defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David [shall be] as God, as the angel of the LORD before them.” The fact that God did not defend Jerusalem in 70 A.D precludes any preterist interpretations of Zechariah 12:10, particularly since preterism holds that Jesus Christ came to punish the Jews in 70 A.D., not to fight and overcome their enemies for them.

Still more evidence? Zechariah 12:2-3 reads “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah [and] against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.” This is a reference to how during the endtimes, the Gentile nations will attempt to destroy Israel and Jerusalem. It will be at that time that Jesus Christ makes His return. Where will this return be? The Mount of Olives according to Zechariah 14:1-4. “Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which [is] before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, [and there shall be] a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.”

Before you stumble at “and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished, and half of the city shall go forth into captivity” and consider that this may refer to the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians or some other event, please recall Revelation 13:7, which speaks of the beast “And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.” Now the Jews at this point are not “the saints”, but it is rather logical to conclude from that verse that the evil forces will inflict no small damage against Jerusalem and its inhabitants before Jesus Christ comes to save them, just as many Christians will perish at the hands of the anti-Christ before the days of the great tribulation are cut short for the elect’s sake (see Mark 13:20 and Matthew 24:22). Further, please recall that Romans 11:28 refers to the Jewish nation as being God’s elect also, thus Jesus Christ will return to ensure that some of both natural and spiritual Israel will survive the great tribulation. From these passages, it appears that natural and spiritual Israel will be combined into one elect church at the second advent of Jesus Christ.

Finally, consider Zechariah 14:6-9. “And it shall come to pass in that day, [that] the light shall not be clear, [nor] dark: But it shall be one day which shall be known to the LORD, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, [that] at evening time it shall be light. And it shall be in that day, [that] living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be. And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one.” Does this not correlate strongly to the description of New Jerusalem in Revelation 21-22? Revelation 21:23 reads “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb [is] the light thereof.” Revelation 22:5 also says “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.” Revelation 22:2 reads “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” Zechariah 14:11 reads “And [men] shall dwell in it, and there shall be no more utter destruction; but Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited.” Revelation 21:4? “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

It is simply inexcusable to ignore all this evidence unless one relies on a symbolic interpretation of not only Revelation, but the prophetic Old Testament material of Zechariah and elsewhere, not to mention New Testament prophecy outside of Revelation such as the Olivet discourse (Matthew 24-25, Luke 21 and Mark 13). The reason for such interpretation is the commitment to a theological construct that demands it (with the covenant theologian John Calvin mentioned at the beginning of this piece being an example). The fact that these texts have regrettably abused by many premillennial dispensationalists provides no justification for denying their plain meaning and application. At the very least, in order to be consistent, one must adopt a symbolic or “spiritual” interpretation of such Messianic prophecy texts as Isaiah 7:14 (yes, almah does mean “virgin” in that verse and not “young woman”, otherwise almah would not have been translated as parthenos, which can only mean “virgin”, in the Septuagint by Jewish scholars who lived over a hundred years before Jesus Christ!) and Isaiah 9:6.

Though the date of Israel’s national salvation will be the second advent of Jesus Christ, the question is the date of your salvation. This is so even if you are Jewish, for A) we do not know the day or the hour of Jesus Christ’s second advent and B) tomorrow is promised to no man. The Bible is clear: whether one is Jewish or Gentile, salvation is of the Lord, and there is only one Name by which men will be saved, and that Name is Yeshua Ha’Mashiach, with the common English transliteration being Jesus Christ. If you have not already been saved through Jesus Christ, I urge and entreat you to make your time of salvation right now.

Revelation 6:1-2 reads “And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.”

The predominant view in modern western fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity is that the rider of the white horse is the anti-Christ. This was my view until very recently, when I read the John Bunyan allegory “Holy War“, which altered, or should I say enhanced, my view of Jesus Christ (more on that later), just as did reading “Pilgrim’s Progress Part 1” changed my view of Christian living and Part II changed my view of the pastorate and of the church.

Allow me to say that this article provides a good reason why the rider on the white horse cannot be the anti-Christ, which is that the four horsemen are released this eschatological figure is not released until the fifth trumpet. The trumpets do not occur until the seventh seal, and the white horse is released by the first seal. So, the white horse comes at or near the beginning of the events of Revelation (presuming a linear timeline with a literal interpretation) while the anti-Christ comes well into those events. Some interpretations deal with this by claiming that the reference in Revelation 6:2 is the anti-Christ’s laying the groundwork, placing everything in order, for his full unveiling to the earth that is described later.

Well, further arguments against the rider being the anti-Christ are given in this article. It deals with how those who propose that the rider is the anti-Christ deal with the fact that white is always used to represent Godly virtue by making the statement that the anti-Christ comes in this manner to deceive people into thinking that he is Jesus Christ. However, this interpretation requires starting with the idea that the rider on the white horse is the anti-Christ, and then making everything else fit, something often called thesis-driven analysis and also called eisegesis. If your starting point was neutral concerning the identity of this character, then his being on a white horse would immediately disqualify your associating him with the anti-Christ. But if your starting point was his being the anti-Christ, that is when you have to contrive an explanation for the horse being white, one that seems to violate all rules and standards for hermeneutics used for other passages. The question is: “Why is this done?”

It goes back to one’s view of Jesus Christ. The rider of the white horse is given a bow and he went forth to conquer, and conquer he did! Modern, humanistic, enlightenment thinking does not permit viewing Jesus Christ as the Conqueror. That is, at least not until the last day when Jesus Christ comes to judge the nations for their wickedness. That is the one time that the modern church with its man-centered mindset allows Jesus Christ, who as God is the Creator, Owner and Sustainer of the Universe, to be viewed as a conquering ruler. (And for those who believe in the rapture, this happens when the church is already off the scene, and is spared having to deal with Jesus Christ in this role.) In the modern mindset, Jesus Christ can be viewed as the sacrificial lamb, advisor, “co-pilot”, best friend, psychiatrist/psychologist, enabler, helper, moneychanger (prosperity doctrine), mystic/shaman, errand boy, and even romantic lover, but NOT as a conquerer. This stark, authoritarian, militaristic view runs counter to the modernistic Jeffersonian view that exalts such ideas as civil rights, human rights, democracy etc. above all, and needs a Jesus Christ that will bow and be conformed to it. Thus, Jesus Christ as conquerer cannot exist in the mind of the modernist/postmodernist Christian except for a single day when He is forced to execute that role with respect to the wicked. With the exception of that day, Jesus Christ remains in a construct that the modern mind finds acceptable. And according to that construct, where conquest to set up authoritarian rule is undemocratic is evil, this HAS to be the anti-Christ!

It cannot be Jesus Christ according to this mindset, because this mindset makes Jesus Christ a democrat. This Jesus Christ does not conquer. No, this Jesus Christ is standing outside the human heart like a lovesick teenage loverboy knocking on the door waiting, longing, begging for His sweetheart to come in. And it is only when the person that Jesus Christ’s target makes the free will decision to open the door to his or her heart and invite Jesus Christ in that salvation occurs.

For this to happen any other way, uninvited, unasked, and without consent, is tyranny. For Jesus Christ is not a sovereign king who rules by way of His undisputed dominion over the creation that is the work of His own hands for Him to do as He pleases. No, that is tyranny. Such rule is illegitimate, based on the threat of force rather than the consent of the governed! A true, enlightened philosopher king governs not by power or divine right, but by mutual consent! So, the one who stands at the door and knocks and will not come in without the consent of the “pilot” (for Jesus Christ is merely the co-pilot, not the actual pilot who is running the show and is the true master of eternal destiny, which is man’s free will) is Jesus Christ, the genuine article. The conquerer who does not ask permission, who does not gladly (though under submission) come when asked and does not meekly leave when rejected? Now that has to be the anti-Christ! So says the modern Christian mindset.

Thankfully, John Bunyan did not live in modern Enlightenment times! Therefore, Bunyan presents a different Jesus Christ, one that is actually present on the pages of the Bible before all the modern humanist filters and constructs are placed on it. Bunyan’s rather rough allegory presents a kingdom ruled by Shaddai (God the Father), whose most prominent and prized possession is the city Mansoul, which was built by the King Himself. While the modern mindset reared on democracy would revile the idea that a city is the possession of any king, A) this was in fact the custom of monarchs in times past – the kingdom and all in it were their possessions, and in the east the subjects of the “lord-kings” were considered slaves to the lord-king, and remember the Bible is an oriental book, not a western book and B) the Bible was fully written in the mindset of this custom. Mansoul rebelled against King Shaddai due to the provocation and trickery of Diabolus (Satan) and made Satan its king instead, under the false pretense that they could exchange status as slaves under King Shaddai’s rule to free men under his rule. Of course, Diabolus immediately made the residents of Mansoul his slaves, but so thoroughly corrupted and tricked them that they mistook the slavery of Diabolus and sin for liberation. Their delusion was so strong that when King Shaddai sent His captains (difficult to tell in the allegory, my guess is that they are angels) to liberate Mansoul from Diabolus, they resisted with all their might. The story was explicit: when Mansoul was given a multitude of opportunities to make a free will choice for King Shaddai, they rejected King Shaddai each time due to the depths of their depravity.

So, King Shaddai sent His Son, Prince Emmanuel, to recapture Mansoul. In this allegory, Emmanuel did not conquer Mansoul by standing at the door knocking and being invited in. Quite the contrary, He came with an army of soldiers and overcame the recalcitrant Mansoul, who resisted Him with all the force that it could muster – as it was still dedicated and devoted to Diabolus and its own sinful passions – with mighty force. Make no mistake, in this allegory, “and he went forth conquering, and to conquer” Mansoul! After the conquering of Mansoul was done, Prince Emmanuel had the entire town confess that He took the town for Himself as His prize by force; that when the town had the chance – indeed several chances – to yield itself up to the government of the Prince and His Father by choice, they refused each time. So, Mansoul chose the rule of Diabolus, and Prince Emmanuel gained the rule of Mansoul only by overtaking Diabolus, binding him, driving him out, and “spoiling the goods of the strongman” by declaring and setting up His own rule and domain – and through it re-establishing the same of King Shaddai – by force. Mansoul had no say in the matter, because Mansoul, by decree, election and will of God the Father its Owner and Creator – had declared it to be so. Mansoul did not choose Prince Emmanuel, but Emmanuel chose Mansoul (John 15:16).

Now, Jesus Christ as He is commonly depicted in most modern gospel music is not the rider on the white horse. But Jesus Christ as depicted in Holy War and in the Bible may well be. If nothing else, it is something to consider. Another thing to consider: why would the anti-Christ have to go about conquering the world to begin with? According to the words of Jesus Christ, Satan is already the prince of this world (John 14:30)! 2 Corinthians 4:4 declares Satan to be the god of this world, Ephesians 2:2 declares him to be the prince of the powers of the air. So, the anti-Christ does not need to conquer the world. All he needs is to have Satan’s authority transferred to him. Revelation 13:2 says exactly that: “And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as [the feet] of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.” Further, Revelation 17 says that the rulers of the earth GIVE their power to the beast, NOT that he conquers them and takes it from them by force.

This may seem like idle speculation, or an excessive emphasis on “last things” when other issues concerning orthodoxy and orthopraxy are more pressing: “minoring in the majors.” However, one’s view of last things often casts a shadow on one’s belief. Many theological liberals and “moderates” de-emphasize predictive prophecy because of an anti-supernatural bias. Others use apocalyptic texts to promote the political and social causes that are near and dear to them. And many Christians are attracted to the rapture doctrines because of their desire not to suffer persecution and rejection by the world as Christ suffered the same.

In a similar fashion, the idea that the anti-Christ is the conquerer on the white horse reveals the mindset of a great many Christian theologians, preachers, and laymen concerning the doctrine of original sin. So many Christians SAY that they believe in original sin, or even total depravity, but by adhering to such interpretations as this, it really does imply otherwise. If original sin is true, if total depravity is true, then why is it that Jesus Christ comes only by willing invitation, and the anti-Christ only by force? Is that not backwards? If the anti-Christ, the beast is “the man of sin”, then the fallen, wicked world, if it is not his already, will freely, gladly accept him as one of their own, a kindred spirit! Again, why would a sinful world oppose and resist a man of sin? Why would they not accept him and instead need to be conquered by him? Only if there is some inherent virtue, inherent goodness in him that would cause him to resist the evil rather than accept it.

The idea that the anti-Christ would have to conquer is based on the notion that man is basically good; that the nations are basically good. And is that not what so many seem to adhere to because of their political, cultural and social beliefs? That the nations – especially the pro-western capitalist democracies – are good, and only the exceptions – the anti-democratic, anti-western, authoritarian regimes – are bad.

Isn’t it curious how most of the theories about where the anti-Christ will come is from the “bad” nations? First it was from the “bad” communist regimes. Then it was from the “bad” secular humanist socialist United Nations or European Union. Now speculation centers on the “bad” Islamic regimes. The idea that the anti-Christ could come from – gasp! – America, the shining city on a hill, the nation founded on Christianity and is a beacon of freedom and goodness? Well, MAYBE, but only if he is not really one of uslike Obama!

Again, it is based on the idea that there is some inherent virtue in man, and some inherent virtue in what man builds. It is based on a rejection of original sin, a rejection of total depravity. Even the very idea that Satan takes over the earth and installs the anti-Christ only when the church departs after the rapture is based on the notion that Satan is not the god of this world at present! Ironically, people who adhere to this belief are de facto amillennalists believing that rather than being the god of this world in this present age, Satan is currently bound by the church’s presence.

So many Christians who profess to be evangelical or fundamentalist and profess a belief in original sin based on the actions of Adam only apply that doctrine to soteriology. They only apply mankind’s fallen nature to the individual human soul! But when it comes time to apply it to a larger scale, they shrink back! Why? Because of their love of this present world and the things in it! To those people, James 4:4’s “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” applies to liking MTV and the New York Times editorial page and not the entire fallen worldly system! The parts of the world they like, they consider it good, moral, even Christian. It is only the part that they are alienated from, usually because of political or cultural considerations, that they consider to be “worldly.”

But go back to the text and view it in context. Yes, Revelation concerns the last days. But the letter to the Hebrews – and elsewhere in the New Testament – declares that the last days began after the work of Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of God’s plan and the high point of the history of creation. So, the last days – the time period that Revelation concerns itself with – is not merely the last seven years, the “great tribulation.” Instead, it concerns itself with the entire endtimes, which is now, and has been since Pentecost. That is why the letters to the churches are the first part of the Revelation. They are not introductory material to set the stage for the eschatology. Instead, they are part and parcel of the eschatology!

In that context, note that the white horse and its rider come first. It is the first seal! So, after the heavenly visions in Revelation 4-5, the white horse and its rider are the first thing that we encounter when the events shift back earthward in Revelation 6. So, why not strongly associate the white horse and rider with Jesus Christ speaking to and walking amongst the churches in Revelation 2-3? Were the material in Revelation to be arranged topically (i.e. with the things happening in heaven all together and the things happening on earth all together), that is exactly how it would appear … Revelation 6:1-2 would immediately follow the challenge to the Laodicean church!

So then, why not consider the possibility that the rider on the white horse given the bow and the crown and goes about conquering (and as this articlestates he does not obtain or use these things illegitimately in a manner that is against God’s will … such ideas are missing from the text) is going about to foreign lands conquering souls of sinners for God the Father? Did not Jesus Christ say in the Olivet discourse (i.e. Matthew 24:14) that the end will not come until His gospel is preached in all the world for a witness to all nations? Well, in Revelation 6, though it is certainly the last days, the end is not yet come! So, me must consider that the rider on the white horse is none other than Prince Emmanuel enlarging the domain of King Shaddai through the conquest of souls in every tribe and nation that are hardened with the total depravity of original sin.

Granted, this articledoes state that the rider is the Holy Spirit, not Jesus Christ. I disagree, but for my purposes the distinction is not a great one, as Jesus Christ sent the Holy Spirit in His Name to complete His Work through the church which is Jesus Christ’s Body, and the Holy Spirit is the One who performs regeneration. Instead, the main point is to consider the strong possibility that man-centered, humanistic thinking is the reason why the rider on the white horse was ever called the anti-Christ to begin with, especially when one has to be very inconsistent in one’s interpretation of Revelation and the Bible in general to arrive at that viewpoint.

Of course, the main point is that Jesus Christ is returning to judge the world and all its people for their wickedness. The only way to escape this judgment that is certainly to come at a time in the future that has been predetermined by God the Father is to be saved through Jesus Christ. If you have not been, I urge and entreat you that you would be so; that you too would be a conquest of Jesus Christ as was I.

However, the Holy Spirit, called the Spirit of God the Father (Matthew 10:20, Isaiah 61:1, Luke 4:18) and the Spirit of God the Son (Galatians 4:6, Romans 8:9, Isaiah 61:1, Luke 4:18) is never declared to be King by scripture at any time. Also, where both God the Father and God the Son are both spoken of as being glorified and exalted, to my knowledge God the Holy Spirit is never spoken of by scripture as being glorified or exalted at any time.

Driving to work this morning viewing the effects of the terrible thunderstorms that spared my neighborhood but hard hit the one right next to mine, I was listening to Christian radio. Out of the blue comes TD Jakes’ booming voice. In it, he first speaks of how much he loves America and so forth. I immediately thought of Jakes doing this to exploit anger over Barack Hussein Obama, Michelle Obama, and Jeremiah Wright’s considerably less than jingoistic statements and actions. Then he went into his exhortation spiel for people to register and get out to vote.

First, I see Lifeway Bookstores, owned by the Southern Baptist Convention, selling TD Jakes’ doctrinal error (oneness pentecostalism and the Word of Faith/prosperity doctrine are but a few of his MANY problems) and now the National Religious Broadcasters are using this guy. I had been using the NRB as a sort of a refuge from the blatant charismania that you will find on The Word Network, Trinity Broadcasting Network, Daystar, etc. So I just ignored the heavy Pat Robertson presence on the channel, as well as their “white Europeans are the descendants of the children of Israel … the Danube River is so named because of the tribe of Dan” show that comes on early in the morning. I also ignored their embrace of the Ellen White Seventh Day Adventist cult. So I suppose that I cannot cast NRB aside on Jakes’ account, since the ones that I just named are hardly better – if anything some might be worse – or else I would be reacting out of a personal dislike for Jakes rather than on principle. (On the other hand, Slice of Laodicea has criticized NRB, albeit for different reasons, such as this post stating that not one red cent of NRB’s $5 BILLION IN ASSETS is being used to defend the faith from Oprah Winfrey.)

Incidentally, speaking of TD Jakes and PR spots, he has another one out (I did not catch the sponsor!) promoting single sex education, saying that “boys need their own schools so that they will be able to, you know, romp and stuff (his choice of words not mine!) and that boys learn differently from girls and needed their own classrooms in order to be accommodated. So … it looks like Jakes is not that far removed from Jeremiah Wright’s separatist doctrines after all?

I have to be honest, back when I was part of the religious right and allowing my worldview to be shaped by the Washington Times and the National Review, I was in full agreement. But now … I just recall reading about this inner city public school that went all male. Sure, the discipline problems decreased and the test scores went up. But when they interviewed the boys that attended the school, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM WANTED THEM TO BRING THE GIRLS BACK! Why? Because, er … BOYS LIKE GIRLS! Or at least they are supposed to anyway. Perhaps now that T.D. Jakes is on board with the new world order’s gay rights agenda (and yes this is relevant … perhaps due to his son) he thinks it is OK. To me, the whole single sex education thing … who wants it? Certainly not the kids. Not the administrators or teachers. Parents go for it only because they are desperate for any hook or angle to improve the failing school systems that the government is ruining on purpose. Not even the old fashioned religious sorts – of which I am one – think that it is a good idea anymore, where you were supposed to keep boys and girls separate in their little boarding or finishing schools (where they were supposed to look OH SO CUTE in their little uniforms I guess) UNTIL GRADUATION DAY WHEN YOU MARRY THEM OFF.

Sorry people, but society has changed. Not all of the changes have been for the good, but methinks that one of the most important things for a boy to learn from school is how to treat a lady and how to behave yourself in their presence. For some of us guys, those things do not come naturally, and you only learn them through trial and error. Especially error. (If you don’t learn to handle competition and rejection in junior high and high school, how on earth are you supposed to handle being turned down for jobs, promotions, college choices, etc. later in life?) So … HOW ON EARTH ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO LEARN THOSE THINGS IF THERE ARE NO GIRLS AROUND TO LEARN THEM FROM?

Like I said, TD Jakes may have his own reasons for wanting to turn your local public school into Morehouse College or similar, and whatever they are I oppose them 100%. All the more reason why the Southern Baptist Convention should not be selling this guy’s books and NRB shouldn’t be using him for their get out the vote campaign. But I suppose that this oneness anti – Trinitarian heretic is just too good at making money and moving public opinion for these people to pass up. That is, unless they are actually along with Jakes, on his side. After all, the Southern Baptists refuse to do anything about the likes of New Age heretic Erwin McManus and Council on Foreign Relations worker Rick Warren (and Richard Land too?), and as stated earlier, Al Sharpton Al Gore global warming propagandist partner Pat Robertson is a major partner with the NRB.

When I first started this website, I enthusiastically endorsed Jesus camps, thinking that they were an excellent way to turn children into spiritual warriors – as it WAS initially a charismatic spiritual warfare site – from an early age. Well … WOW WAS I WRONG! Jesus camps use the evil combination of spiritually seductive charismatic slain in the spirit frenzy and dominion theology politics. Instead of teaching children to pray for their enemies, to show kindness to the poor and elderly people, to interpret the Bible and discern doctrines, to worship and praise the Lord in a dignified manner becoming His glory, and to exhibit the fruits of the Holy Spirit, these folks are feeding these children false Christian doctrines and fascist notions of merging church, state, culture, etc. that will makes any of them that internalize this spiritual evil easy pickings for the anti – Christ and moreover very willing workers in the plot to create the climate where the man of sin will take power. The more things like this come out, as well as things with the Jesus Seminar, Mike Huckabee, Jeremiah Wright … Bible believing Christians have to start speaking out. There is something seriously wrong with both the religious right and the religious left, and we have to start boldly opposing it with the Word of God.

Genesis 6:5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Luke 17:26And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.

A liberal Christian came by about a year ago to challenge me as to whether corporate industrial pollution was responsible for the increase in homosexuality – especially among children – by messing with their hormones (see link here). My response to him? COULD BE! Whether corporate greed drives sexual perversion, or whether sexual perversion drives corporate greed (pornography IS a multi – billion dollar business, and that does not even include the things that aren’t counted as pornography but should be, so where there is a demand mammon will meet it). But now here is the evidence that sexual perversion is deeply embedded into our culture and being normalized:

CHILDREN HAVE CUT themselves. In some cases, 9- or 10-year-old kids have staged suicide attempts. The little boys sob unless they’re allowed to wear dresses. The girls want to be called Luke, Ted, or James. Their parents, desperate to know what is wrong, go online and type “gender disorder.” And what they find is that, even now, decades after doctors performed the first sex changes in America, there’s little help for transgender children.

There is more.

IDEAS: When are children old enough to declare what gender they will be?

SPACK: All I know is that when I see preadolescents, they have been dressing in the underwear of the other sex for years. These kids are almost certainly transgendered.

And they say evil spirits are not real? We are not just talking about the evil spirits in the children, but rather from the ADULTS that accommodate this vile wickedness, this abuse of God’s creation. This is the key part: the article says that pre – adolescents have been exhibiting this behavior for years. Pre – adolescent means pre – teen, which equates to 10 – 12. So if a 10 year old has been doing this for years, it means since 6, or 4. That is before a child has had any meaningful exposure to the culture: schools, movies and television, etc. So then, how is it that these children have been turned so perverse so early? Child molestation is an easy answer, but too easy. You may want to blame parental neglect due to so many households in which women work – especially households led by single mothers – but that is a class based argument, not a spiritual one, for many of our lower income and minority communities have always seen high percentages of working mothers and single mothers without anything like these sorts of problems. And please realize that the article talks about how this fellow learned these techniques from the oh so progressive Dutch who lack some of our social problems (instead having entirely different ones that the American media rarely speaks of).

I think that an answer may be found in studying the state of Old Testament Israel. Regrettably I do not have a link at hand, but in one of his messages in The Minor Prophets series, Ronald Dart of Born To Win spoke of King Josiah’s efforts to spiritually rescue Israel, and gave the opinion that sometimes a nation’s apostasy has gone on so long and is so deeply embedded into the culture that it cannot be saved. Dart spoke of Israel then with their idolatry, sexual perversion (including child prostitution) and murder of the innocent (including child sacrifice) and compared it with the evils of contemporary America, making the conjecture that America had itself crossed its spiritual Rubicon into irrecoverable corruption and apostasy. So, God destroyed Israel, leaving it utterly desolate, so that the land could rest from the abominations of the people. Why? Well, God still had plans for the land … for His Son to be born into it. But Israel had so corrupted the land that God intended to be holy and set apart for the purposes of Jesus Christ that it had to be cleansed through desolation.

Think back thousands of years earlier, Sodom and Gomorrah. The place was filled with sexual immorality and violence, so God overthrew it. And think back quite a time earlier, in the primordial period just before the flood. The whole world was filled with violence and other evils, including the giants in the land, the nephilim about which there has been so much speculation. But in all of these instances, the Word of God records that the very land itself had become corrupted with sin. Not just the people. Not just the cultural traditions, perverted religions, and public institutions of government, military, and commerce. And not just the animals (which the Bible makes clear can be corrupted, not only through God declaring everything that had breath of life corrupt and having to be destroyed in the flood and the evil spirits entering the swine when Jesus Christ cast them out of a man, but when God often warned the children of Israel not to keep or sacrifice to Him the cattle and sheep of pagan nations, but instead to destroy them all along with the people!), but the very land itself!

Now I will grant you, there is some ambiguity or flexibility as to what precisely the term “land” means in various contexts in the Bible, but in this instance we can be reasonably certain that it is strongly correlated with the geography of a nation itself. So if the land is polluted by what the people living in the land are doing, then in what manner is this pollution? If it is not a horde of evil spirits attracted to an area by repulsive sinful conduct of the worst manner, I do not know what is. And there is no worse sin than that of the person who has knowledge of God or professes God but rejects God. Yet that was what happened with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and mankind falling into sin and the entire creation being corrupted with it was the result. Romans 1:18-32 makes it clear that many in the world knew of God during the primordial period. And then you had the apostasy of Israel, God’s elect nation of stiff – necked people. Now I reject dominion and official theology, America is not the new Israel. But still, how can we not compare the wretched conduct of so many people who claim to believe in God to that of biblical Israel, of Sodom and Gomorrah, or of the cosmos before the flood? So if we are indeed a land corrupted by sin, with what is the resulting corruption? From my humble estimation, it can be nothing else but evil spirits that have such reign over the land that they can now enter into children of very young ages – ages before both Jewish and Christian doctrine claims that they can possess any responsibility for sin – and fill them with thoughts and provoke them to behaviors that are not convenient even without those children personally having been exposed to external sources of wickedness on that scale.

So we can suppose, then, that the effects of God ridding a corrupted land from its people so that it can rest as He did with Israel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the entire world with the flood can be viewed in terms of Matthew 12:43-45, which reads “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.” Get rid of all the people, and there is nowhere for these unclean spirits walking through dry places to find rest, and nowhere for him to bring the seven spirits more wicked than he. It would honestly appear that with the grotesque abominations that are now not only commonplace and accepted but DEMANDED by our contemporary society that America as a nation is that wicked generation that is in that last state. The only question is whether it applies just to America, as it did to Israel in the time and place that Jesus Christ was speaking (as the nation of Israel was destroyed in 70 A.D.) or does it apply to the whole world? Is this the beginning of sorrows for the earth, or just for America? After all, nations have come and nations have gone! Remember the mighty civilization that the Aztecs built? Yet the conquistadors overthrew it all! So … time will tell.

I acknowledge that during the short time (a little over a year) since I started this website, I have gone from (disillusioned) Pentecostal to a more Reformed Christianity, but people, evil spirits are real, and Reformed Christians have to come up with a way to deal with these problems through evangelism and ministry programs so that we can redeem God’s children from the clutches of the enemy. That is one of the reasons why I have yet to remove the spiritual warfare materials from the top (also to the side) of the site: it is mostly from the charismatic perspective – with due respect to the Baptist Frank Hammond – but really what else is there?

From another perspective, this type of evil shows how perversion is taking over the world. Not only is it happening virtually unchecked, but it is the people that say that it is wrong that would face opposition. Suppose you and I were to go to Boston right now with picket signs and bullhorns in front of this fellow’s office, declaring to the world the abomination that it is. (Of course, some would propose that quietly talking to people and handing out gospel tracts would be a more effective and more Christian way of dealing with this evil than publicity – seeking grandstanding, but consider the question anyway.) The news media, the intellectuals (of which there is no shortage of in Boston) and even many clergy would denounce such an effort as hateful, bigoted, intolerant, etc. and before long there would be hate crimes legislation against it, with news footage of Christians yelling and swinging signs at crying confused children, it would be a political watershed moment for the gay rights community, their Selma. Yet a mere 40 years ago, such an establishment working this type of evil against children would have been burned to the ground!

It has to be spiritual. Satan knows that he has but a short time, so the forces of spiritual wickedness are being unleashed upon the earth in a way like never before, and it will build until the return of Jesus Christ. The moral climate, the economic climate, the wars and diseases, the apostasy of the church … it all adds up to one thing: the fulfillment of the things spoken of in Daniel, Ezekiel, the Olivet discourses of Jesus Christ in the gospels, Revelation, etc. And yes, the apostasy of the church is a clear indication. How can these things be going on in a nation that claims to be over 75% Christian (if not higher) without a single hint of righteous outrage? Without armies of Christians motivated to action? It is as if a spiritual cloud of fear, defeat, blindness, pacifism, and accommodation is hanging over the church. And so many are that are fighting are doing it the wrong way: through electoral politics and in the courts. Were John Edwards and George Whitefield about today, what would they say about us? And better yet: how come WE are not doing what John Edwards and George Whitefield did? And yes, I include myself among the number of those that really are not doing nearly enough for the gospel. I have to do more. We ALL have to do more!

Jesus Christ is coming back soon, Christians. And when He does, what will you say if He asks you why didn’t you do anything to help, defend, and advocate for His little children such as these?